Forget about Romney, Obama; we need some socialists

You know what America needs? A strong socialist party. There is a socialist party now — called Socialist Party USA — but outside of the party members, no one really hears about it. I mean, they’ve got a .net address, for crying all night. Tells about all you need to know.

But yep. A strong socialist party. A party that demands the workers rise! And the means of production seized! And whatever else socialism would mean! (I’m not exactly a scholar on the issue.) (I also just had to run a Google search on “scholar” to see how to spell it. Moving on.)

Moving on, a strong socialist presence would go a long way to curing the ills of America. Having a thriving political party seeking to smooth out all the rough edges of capitalism will be a monster benefit to America. We need the socialists to argue, fight and run for a radical transformation of our way of life.

And now ...

And now I’ll bet every last one of you thinks I’ve done lost my last remaining marble (because I had to, all socialist-like, give away the rest of them). I also bet you’re all Republicans. Or Democrats. Or somewhere in between. Yep. People from both sides of the American political spectrum probably think I’m a complete idiot for advocating socialism. And with good reason too, as most of us — present company included — think socialism is not the American way. We all can agree on this.

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And that’s the point. The point here is not that socialism is a good idea, but that if we had a third party really pushing to upend our Democracy-crazy ways, we just might start agreeing on the meaningless issues currently dividing our nation.

Right now, we’re in the middle of a heated presidential election. President Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney. The way it seems, you’d think we’re choosing between Right or Wrong. Left or Right. Jedi or Sith.

But in reality … not so much.

Now of course, there’s differences between the two candidates. Obviously. But when it comes to economics — as Adam Davidson, the co-founder of NPR’s “Planet Money” explained in a New York Times Magazine piece, and where this whole column idea sprang from — the differences are less about big ideas and more about a few pennies here and there.

For instance, taxes. Obama is advocating a 28 percent top corporate tax rate, Romney wants the top rate slashed to … 25 percent. Neither candidate, as of yet, has advocated taking over the corporations and nationalizing them.

The list goes on from here, and it’s not just economics or taxes. The differences between the candidates — and the two parties, in general — are mostly of the fine-line variety, big-picture wise.

As a result, the two parties are both pretty good at riling us up over things that don’t really matter, turning us against each other, and the real issues either get pushed aside or they get decided by the powerful few at the expense of us regular joes.

But throw in a third party that’s wildly different than the two we’ve got, and all of a sudden the small differences between Republican and Democrat get erased. All of a sudden, politicians on both sides would have to band together to fight off the Socialists. (Or Communists. Or whatever-ists.) All of a sudden, the political parties would have take a giant, heaving step to the middle, where most of us reside anyway.

And maybe — if you’ll allow me an honest-to-goodness Kumbaya moment — we’d all band together and demand a little more out of our candidates instead of letting them force us into false ideological corners. In short, the fine lines would be erased between the two capital-D Democracy parties and replaced with a gulf separating them from the whatever-ists.

Just a thought.

And by the way, no, I’m not a Socialist. At all. I wouldn’t be on the side of socialism. Socialism wouldn’t work in America. No way, no how, no chance, in no form whatsoever. Never mind Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education, disability, unemployment, SSI, TANF, CHIP … nope. It would never take. We’d revolt.